


Porcelain

by volti



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t until he touches his forehead to hers and tells her to stop crying that he allows himself to be made of porcelain, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Porcelain

**Author's Note:**

> Everything I touch becomes sad. Nothing is safe. Literally everything is sad. Also, queerplatonic RivaMika is so important and so is demisexual Mikasa. Sliiiiight spoilers for chapter 53, but it’s more blink-and-you-miss-it than anything else. (And I accidentally sort of copied a scene out of Toradora witHOUT EVEN REALIZING IT I’M SUCH TRASH—)
> 
> Also, I would recommend listening to [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o8fqO4ltOA) while you read.

When they come home, it is raining. The sky is grey, and Eren is being carried in a cart, and it feels as though the whole world is staring them down. Some of them have injuries. Some of them couldn’t come back alive. But, like with every expedition, Levi has their patches in his pocket, which he pats occasionally to remind himself that he is alive, that they once were, that they could have died in vain, or not. His fingers curl tightly into his cape to assure himself that they won’t.

When he turns back to look at Mikasa, her head is down, and she has one of Eren’s hands in both of her own, as though that is her reminder that they’re safe. He looks at her the way he holds his patches, and in the moment that they share a look, her eyes tell him that she thinks she needs to be held. He nods to her, makes no sound amid the complaints of taxes wasted yet _again_ and the solemn crunch of their boots against the dirt, until they reach the set of cabins where his new squad is housed.

Levi watches them hang up their souls, or what little is left of them, with their cloaks, how they drip onto the towel Mikasa has laid on the floor because, oddly enough, it’s what Eren would have done if he were conscious. He watches them recede to their rooms, worn and stained like the boots in their hands, until Mikasa stands alone, boots still on, eyes still glued to the floor where Eren’s stretcher had once been before Jean hauled him away. Slowly, he begins the walk to his room, the shuffle and tap of boots telling him that she’s not far behind.

They say nothing as they walk to his room, as he lets her in first and watches her all but sink into the mattress; they say nothing as he removes her boots and harnesses with an affectionate precision, and she his in much the same way, before she tugs her scarf up over her lips, the way she does when she’s tired. It’s never bothered him before; he’s had no reason to be, because she treats her scarf like he treats his patches, because he’s realized that she’s so unshakable sometimes, that Eren will always be a rock of a different kind to her. It’s something he’s never wanted to interfere with, something he’d rather coexist alongside, and for them to live like this calms them both.

He sighs to himself, never once looking away from the twin piles of leather by his bedside table, and she copies him, bringing her legs up and crossing them, as though folding into herself is the only way she can cope until one of them makes a move. And he does, as he does much more often than she. He locks his arms around her and coaxes her into his lap, a silent reminder that she is something more than pound upon pound of muscle and steel and little heart to spare, and she responds in kind, presses her forehead into his shoulder and locks her legs around his waist.

He remembers when it first started, whatever this is; he remembers the night they rescued Eren and that little bit of a girl, Historia, how he found Mikasa huddled in the kitchen after hours, scarf over her face as she madly repeated some mantra of _don’t feel_ and _fight_ until he crouched down to take her hand. He remembers how her voice cracked and how utterly scared she looked because she’d been caught, how he said, “Don’t be stupid, Ackerman, of course you’re allowed to feel,” and how she sank into herself and shot back, “What do _you_ know about feeling?”

“Enough to know that you’re allowed to,” he replied, and what Levi remembers most is how she leaned into him and cried, and how she wondered if her body had ever relaxed this much before.

“Are you okay?” he asks her quietly, the first words either of them has spoken since they returned, and the curl of her fingers into his shirt tells him she isn’t ready to talk yet. “You’ve been coming around more often these days,” he remarks.

“I’m okay,” Mikasa replies, a low rumble that reminds him of a beast poised to pounce. “I just need this, is all.” She pauses. “You do, too, don’t you?”

Levi’s tried not to think about his needs, because experience has nearly numbed him and convinced him that they are less than hers, but he supposes he can’t really disagree with her, not after they’ve done this so many times for so long. He can’t disagree with how fulfilled he feels whenever she holds him like this, or when he sometimes wakes up to find her folded into him, or how unbelievably and inexplicably empty it feels when she finally pulls away and leaves. 

He mumbles a _yes_ and settles for smoothing out the wrinkles in her scarf and her brow, reveling quietly in how her fingers and palms drag up and down the lines of his back and shoulder blades in consolation, as though he needs this more than she does. For once, though, it isn’t a point of competition, who needs what more from whom; they breathe, give and take as they please until they’re as balanced as they can be, and it’s all that matters to them.

A moment later, Mikasa’s fingers stop, which Levi has come to learn means that she has something she needs to say. “What is it?” he asks, already missing the feel of her hands in spite of himself, and then adds, “Say what you need to say,” when her hands start to move again.

She pushes her forehead into his shoulder again, as if trying to make herself forget. “It’s nothing.”

“Mikasa,” he begins, his tone admonishing as she wriggles and shifts awkwardly in his lap. “We don’t do this for nothing.”

She is silent for a moment, seemingly just as unable to disagree with him, and pulls her hands away. “I think I’m broken.” It’s a confession that lingers under her breath, eager to hide the way she seems to be, and her head is bowed so that her short black hair covers her face.

“It’s hard doing this every day,” he says after a too-heavy silence, “but that’s not the kind of thing that makes someone broken. Especially you.” 

“I’m not talking about Titans,” she says bitterly, and her words cut like a white-hot blade.

He reaches down to stop her from wringing her hands. “I know.” He knows because she’s tried to explain it to him more times than he can count, how the other girls she’s talked to have mentioned the experiences they’ve had, or the feelings, and how, try as she might, she could never quite imagine herself being intimate with anyone. She’s mentioned viewing kisses how others view kinks, how she’s never needed much more than what Levi gives her, and how the others looked at her with strange, misunderstanding eyes. “You aren’t broken,” he assures her, dragging his thumb across her knuckles to seal his words. “Just different.”

“Sometimes,” Mikasa says after a moment of simply sinking into his touch, “sometimes I remember the night Eren saved me, and I wonder if that’s what made me… like this.” Even with the pause, she speaks so matter-of-factly that he wonders how many times she’s said this to herself, if she’s ever told this to anyone, if she’s ever allowed herself to feel her own words. “Like the moment I started to have that control over my body. Sometimes I wonder if I traded being able to feel like that for having that control.”

“You didn’t.” He sighed. “That’s not how it works, and you know it.”

“I know,” she says just barely above a whisper, and it sounds, perhaps in spite of herself, like an apology. “It’s just the only way I can make sense of this.”

“Don’t.”

“Is that an order?” 

He can hear the first signs of a grim smile in her words, and he gingerly pats her hand before giving it a squeeze. “No,” he replies. “It’s a suggestion. If you can’t make sense out of it, then don’t. You’re wasting effort you could be putting somewhere else. You know how you are now; I know, because I’ve been here to see you look in the mirror and label yourself. And you’re all the stronger for it. You can figure the rest out later.” His voice softens. “I’ll help you.” He pauses to wonder how much effect his words will have, if she’ll take them to heart like the mindful partner she’s become to him or if she’ll push on trying like the annoyingly obstinate girl she’s always been. “Your hair’s still wet,” he finally says, and she wriggles off of him to let him search for a towel.

Mikasa sits there like the child she’s never been allowed to be when he rubs her hair dry--cross-legged, head bowed, hands jammed into her lap. “This mission--”

“Was hard,” he cuts in, pauses for a moment because the thought of lost comrades has made him the kind of sick he’d rather hide away, the kind only she’s ever seen. “And we’ll have more hard missions. And easy ones. We’ll keep having them until we win. Understood?”

She nods silently, lets him finish his work, and he keeps the towel on her head as he leans in to press a rare kiss to her cheek. It’s when he’s pulling away and sitting back that he hears her speak.

“Again.”

It’s the first time she’s ever asked so openly, the first time she’s ever really needed it, and Levi kisses her other cheek in response. “Again,” she says once more, and she seems to crack with every time she says it, every time his kisses her cheek or her temple or the palm of her hand. And it’s how he reminds himself that around him, she is made of porcelain instead of steel.

The last time Mikasa says it, he pulls back to look at her and sees that her eyes are half-lidded and wet with the kind of tears that only come when one is too tired to function any longer. He looks at her, thumbs a tear away, and finally kisses her forehead. It isn’t until he touches his forehead to hers and tells her to stop crying that he allows himself to be made of porcelain, too. She leaves a spiderweb crack behind when she kisses and cradles his cheek, the broken bits of him grate against each other when she wraps her arms around his shoulders and begins to rub his back again, and when she tells him not to stop crying with that cracked voice of hers, he feels like some parts of him have been glued together again.

They stay like that for a while, crying and folded into each other, unable and unwilling to move, until their shoulders still and they rub their eyes dry. Slowly, shakily, they fall into their regular pattern of comfort--he drags a brush through her hair and tells her the things he likes about her; she folds and unfolds and refolds his cravats and tells him the same thing. He says thank you; she says nothing, but he can see a blush steal across her cheeks as her deft fingers work just a little faster, as she tells him that she likes how it feels when he rests on her, because the weight of him reminds her that he’s there and he’s physical and he’s just as alive as she is.

When her hair is smooth and accented with a little braid and his cravats are folded and neatly tucked away, it is no longer raining. The sky is pale blue, and they are safe, and it feels as though the whole world is watching them sleep. Steel will bleed over porcelain in the morning, and they’ll do this all again. And perhaps, one day, it will be easier.


End file.
